At a session of the Gromadka Municipal Council, a resolution on the Local Government Charter of Family Rights was adopted. The document was prepared by the orthodox Ordo Iuris Institute. Ostensibly, the resolution is meant to protect the family; in reality, it may exclude, for example, couples consisting of two divorced people, widows and widowers, or single mothers with children. The Charter contains the following provision:
In particular, it is necessary to exclude the possibility of allocating public funds and public property to projects that undermine the constitutional identity of marriage as a union between a woman and a man or the autonomy of the family. The rules of local-government competitions for social organizations should also be supplemented with standards strengthening the family and marriage and excluding the allocation of funds to activities that undermine the constitutional foundations of family law or infringe upon citizens’ rights.
Excerpt from the Local Government Charter of Family Rights
The family model promoted by the Ordo Iuris Institute is a marriage with a child.
The family should be based on marriage, in which motherhood and parenthood are fulfilled. In the light of the Constitution, the institutionalization under family law of relationships or arrangements alternative to marriage is inadmissible, particularly granting them a legal status resembling that of marriage, regardless of their internal composition and the number of people forming them (...)
Dr Marcin Olszówka, Ordo Iuris expert
The New Testament, something the fundamentalists from Ordo Iuris and the councillors from Gromadka have forgotten, promotes a non-standard family. Joseph of Nazareth, the patron of Christian families, was a widower and was called the guardian of Mary, a woman younger than him who was pregnant and whom he married. Let us add that Jesus, whom Joseph and Mary raised together, was not Joseph’s child.
We know that the family is a broader concept than a man, a woman and their children. Family is about care, community and love, not ideology. Families are formed not only by married couples, as the fundamentalists from Ordo Iuris would have it. Families are formed by divorced men and women, each with their own children, single mothers with their parents, widows, and single fathers and widowers with children.
Which councillors voted for the resolution that may discriminate against single-parent families?
- Emil Bociek
- Piotr Członka
- Andrzej Drozdek
- Małgorzata Gęsicka
- Alina Hojniak
- Grażyna Kawka
- Piotr Kinaj
- Adam Kozioł
- Krzysztof Król
- Tomasz Kwiatkowski
- Ryszard Lasak
- Józef Liszcz
- Artur Marzec
- Fryderyk Oleksy
- Lidia Zubal
Yes to families, no to discrimination
The councillors from Nowogrodziec behaved differently, rejecting the Charter because they cared about the well-being of all families in the municipality, not just typical ones.
Who presented the Charter proposal in Nowogrodziec? It was Mayor Robert Relich. However, the resolution was not adopted. Four councillors voted in favour, eight against. No one abstained. The councillors from Nowogrodziec justified their refusal by stating that, in its assumptions, this ideological text emphasizes the primary role of the family—the complete family—placing its integrity on an equal footing with the constitutional legal order, or perhaps above it. In its wording, it discriminates against single-parent families in which, for various reasons, the mother or father raises the children alone.
Why are we writing about the Charter of Family Rights?
This potentially discriminatory resolution should be treated with great caution. Under the guise of such political and ideological provisions, it may become possible in the future to block projects supporting families in need and people who stay together to support one another, but whose relationships do not fit the Ordo Iuris dogma of the family. Religious fundamentalists are creating tools not to serve people’s well-being, but to gain political power.
Let us stage Nativity plays and allow local governments to finance and support all families!